spiritual food for thought

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Do you have people for whom it’s very difficult to buy gifts? What do you get the person who has everything? Or even more importantly, what do we give Jesus in this Christmas season?
Here are a few ideas:
Presents – the Wise Men brought Jesus gold, frankincense & myrrh, gifts befitting a King, from the resources they had. Let’s be generous with our resources!
Fame – the shepherds, upon finding Jesus lying in a manger, went out & spread the news about His birth & heavens announcement to them via the angles. Let’s be committed to promoting Jesus more than anything or anyone else!
Presence – never diminish the truth that Jesus enjoys your company, so don’t overlook the pauses & moments throughout this season to give your attention & your self to Jesus 🙂

“Please keep talking.” I popped into Walmart last week for a quick errand after dropping off my son for school & the register chick said this to me. I sheepishly looked at her because I was wearing my hoodie & sweats, not the hair & makeup routine for tv. I could tell she recognized my voice & was trying to match the visual image to my voice. With chagrin I said, “You probably know me from tv with my mom, Marilyn Hickey.”

I love what she said, “I knew your voice immediately but I didn’t expect to see you in my register lane.”
I’ve thought about this for several days because I think this lesson applies to us recognizing Jesus’ voice regardless of our location or expectations. We expect to hear Jesus when we read our Bible or go to church. But let’s also listen for Jesus throughout this day 🙂

Weekly grocery shopping when I’m hungry is tricky, particularly when the store has samples. What happens is that regardless of my list, I can impulse buy & come home with some random stuff.

Sometimes, I think we do the same thing with stuff that’s not just food related. There are times when I can be struggling with some emotional stuff or various pressures & I’ll divert my attention with some sports thing or pick up an interesting book.
What usually works the best for me when I find myself struggling is to let my heart settle deeply into God’s love for me. Rather than being impulsive, let’s train our appetites to crave Jesus, the greatest fulfillment & solution in our lives 🙂

Yesterday, I did my weekly grocery shopping. I usually avoid the Sunday shopping gauntlet because of the lines & lengthened time it takes to accomplish this task. I was of course not surprised to find the check out lines totally overflowing, so I shiftedinto

patient mode & decided to chill out for the wait. Being impatient only makes the line longer & the wait more unpleasant. If you’re like me, you probably do lots of stuff to avoid lines, but here could be some helpful thoughts on this topic:

A line is a place of demarcation & can represent a change of mind & behavior – the proverbial “line in the sand”

Waiting in a line is a good discipline for developing patience, something we all need

A line helps me appreciate incremental progress rather than monstrous leaps

Black Friday seems to be kind of like the starting gun for the Christmas season – ready, set GO!!!! So here’s my weird question for today: why do we call Black Friday “black” and Good Friday “good”? Good Friday is the day when we acknowledge that Jesus was cruicified and the Friday before Easter, when Jesus rose from the dead. Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving & supposed to be a day when loads of people “start” shopping for Christmas – the launch of holiday festivities. Both Fridays have their pluses and minuses – solemn and celebratory. But on this Black Friday, let’s consider a few things:

being thankful didn’t stop yesterday when the dishwasher turned off or the last football seconds ran off the clock

Good Friday is good because Jesus took our place on the cross & that news is very good indeed!

Black Friday doesn’t mean Debt Friday

let’s remind ourselves in this holiday season to keep room in our thoughts, time, actions & priorities for Jesus and His presence 🙂